Middlesbrough v Sporting Lisbon Riverside Stadium, 8.0 Middlesbrough boss Steve McClaren hopes the club's Premier League demise will serve as a wake-up call to his players but fears the season is beginning to take its toll.

Since the turn of the year Boro have won just one of their nine league matches, securing just seven points, to slip from Champions League hopefuls to outside the top six, leaving their ambitions of a return to Europe next season balancing on a knife-edge.

It is a run McClaren concedes is simply not good enough but, in the light of the club's injury woes, has been unable to freshen up a team that is struggling physically to cope. Given the problems, Boro would hardly appear to be in the best shape to face Sporting Lisbon in the first leg of their Uefa Cup last-16 tie at the Riverside tonight.

But McClaren feels the incentive is there for his players to raise their game over the two legs, with the return next Thursday at the Jose Alvalade Stadium, venue for the final on May 18th.

"This is a good chance to put things right," said McClaren. "We suffered a big disappointment on Saturday at Aston Villa (a 2-0 defeat). That kind of performance was very unusual for us and you can make all the excuses under the sun for it, but there were no real reasons. We looked flat and are in need of freshening up, but we are not capable of doing that at the present moment because we've 10 first-team players on the injury table.

"There's a big prize at stake here and that's not lost on anybody. This is one of the biggest games in the club's history, one that whets everybody's appetite, and we want to get through to the last eight."

McClaren, though, has doubts over right-back Michael Reiziger, who has an ankle knock, as well as Parlour, while he continues to be without a number of key players. Mark Viduka and George Boateng are both back in training after hamstring and toe injuries, but are not yet ready to return, while Ugo Ehiogu, Gaizka Mendieta and Malcolm Christie are long-term injuries.